The lawyer who dons a creative cloak
Marini’s creative side: A painting and children’s book by her
To keep young Marini quiet so that her five older siblings could study, her father, the legal luminary, Dr. J.A.L. Cooray would take her to his chambers and give her the Encyclopedia Britannica to draw the flags of various countries. Surrounded by law journals, the Bhagavad Gita, the works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Greek and Roman classics, not only brought out the budding artist and writer in her but also opened her first doors to the legal world.
“The sponge that I was, I absorbed all fine tips of a legal practitioner by watching my father question his clients, prepare for his cases and above all that a lawyer needs to be a fully-rounded professional,” says Marini de Livera, just a few days after taking the reins of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) as its new Chairperson.
Mentored by her father, Marini’s travels to all corners of the island with him, not only broadened her legal horizons, but laid the foundation for her informal education on humanity. The artist, the poet and the writer in Marini, come alive as she recollects the ‘sprawling Jaffna villas’ and their beautifully kept gardens laden with mangoes, long before the ravages of war. “When I used to travel to Jaffna during war time as a legal activist, I used to wonder if this was the same terrain where our Tamil lawyer friends used to smother us with their hospitality and their wives used to entertain us on the piano after dinner,” she recollects nostalgically.
Her stellar track record is as an attorney and academic who could do justice to Constitutional Law, European Law, International Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law and Public International Law here, in the UK and the Republic of Seychelles with equal ease. Wearing the multiple hats of a human rights trainer for the Sri Lanka Army and Police and later as a member in the Child Soldiers’ Rehabilitation Committee, Prison Reforms Committee to name a few, Marini also played a pro-active role in setting up the Women’s Caucus in Parliament under the Parliamentary Modernization Programme initiated by the UNDP. Armed with a wealth of experience serving various Ministries and public institutions here and abroad, Marini was recently invited to speak on ‘Constitutional Reform in Sri Lanka’ at the Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne, Australia. She was also invited to speak at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School of Government at the Harvard University.
A Licentiate teacher in Speech and Drama at Trinity College London and artist as well, Marini encourages budding lawyers to don a creative cloak. She believes that art is a powerful tool in disseminating legal literacy at grass root level where economic violence and cultural violence is rampant. “We also need a system of legal education where students are encouraged to take alternative subjects such as media if we are to realize the rule of law and democracy in reality,” she adds.
Marini has had several art exhibitions some of which she hosted with her law students, projecting many social ills, including violence against the girl child and women, and has also worked to integrate child soldiers through her literary efforts such as ‘Bindu the Bird- a friend for Ranee’.The saree painting project which she initiated in Thalpe to empower rural women also speaks for her untiring efforts as an activist.
Marini de Livera
The journey ahead of her now is the ultimate challenge, she says. “The whole country is looking at me waiting for me to deliver justice in terms of child welfare and the delivery of NCPA’s huge mandate under its statute is indeed a challenge but I’m determined to do my best for our children with the support of many stakeholders,” she says, welcoming innovative approaches from many quarters in society to make this a reality. An advocate of finding remedies to social ills through creative norms Marini endeavours to give the NCPA’s mandate a refreshing interpretation. “Child exploitation is rampant and it’s not just about punishing the offender but having preventive measures in place for which we need to do a lot of work at field level fusing innovative and effective measures.”
A woman who has walked the talk, Marini also encourages young women lawyers to be more vociferous in the realm of public interest litigation. She also calls for legal reforms which can meet modern-day demands such as cyber bullying and flexible working arrangements for women in an era marked by unprecedented technological advancement.
The vivacious lady who is supported in her good and rocky times by her husband Dappula and two children, Sindhu and Dinoosh adds with a chuckle, “I’m unstoppable and if I want to do something for the betterment of people, nothing could hold me back.”
